Memorabilia

My father sent me two beautiful photographs today. One of my grandmother as a child, sitting on her father’s lap. The other of my great-grandfather with two luminaries from India — the poet Rabindranth Tagore, and India’s second President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. I felt something I haven’t felt in a long time — a sense of belonging and pride. A sense of where I came from, what my  family looked like generations before me, what they were doing in those two moments in time captured on film.

My connection to India and my family has changed a lot over the last ten years. It went from acute homesickness the first few years to bittersweet nostalgia as I got more comfortable with my life here in San Francisco. These days it is mostly a brief moment of longing, and I am immediately inevitably distracted by work, television or twitter. I need reminders like those two photographs to feel that sense of belonging and remind me of who I am and where I came from.

Thank you dad, mama, ammamma and thatha for giving me something to be a part of.